


Hello, Goodbye

by geewie



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 36 babies weren't adopted ... and they're angry about it, Blood and Violence, Eventual Fluff, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Other, Psychological Torture, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Spoilers, Time Travel, ben is alive and he's a fucking badass, klaus uses his powers (properly this time), lila has a new (weirdo) friend, new timeline, reginald is a nice guy ... or almost that, the umbrella academy wants their old lives back, welcome to the oblivion hotel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27850214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geewie/pseuds/geewie
Summary: They were back. The Umbrella Academy had survived the year 1963 and returned safe and sound to the gloomy and impetuous hallways of the mansion where most of their childhoods had been spent. But something was different. Suddenly, nothing they had witnessed between those walls could be as terrifying as the sight of Reginald Hargreeves alive, in his impeccable clothes and damning eyes.Meanwhile, somewhere in space-time, Lila Pitts decides to find the Hargreeves after Johnny, a peculiar woman from 1968, reveals the whereabouts of the children Reginald had rejected before the Umbrella Academy was formed.And she was one of them.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Sparrow Academy, Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts, Grace Hargreeves/Reginald Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/Original Character(s), The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Hello, Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> 'Hello, Goodbye' continues after the end of season 2 of The Umbrella Academy, and i hope that this fic will be a good company for us while we wait for the show's official new season. i had promised myself that I wouldn't take any projects other than my originals to write this year, but 'Hello, Goodbye' was the kind of story that would only leave me alone if i wrote it. and here we are. (and to my brazilian readers, 'Hello, Goodbye' can be found in portuguese on wattpad).
> 
> feedback would be nice! ❤️

Johnny felt her ribs crack when she tried to get out of bed that morning. There was also something painful in her head. A sharp, uncomfortable hum that made her want never to open her eyes again. The bitter taste on her tongue didn't make it any easier. It was as if a corpse had been placed inside and just swallowed in its sleep. She let herself go under into the pillow, deeper and deeper, wishing that the cotton balls inside her could invade her ears, after, her brain, and soften the sore spots that throbbed like little drums in her system. Besides, there was light. It was somewhere in the room, you could feel it. For Johnny, it was a sign that her hundredth attempt to keep the windows of that damned trailer closed had been as futile as the first ninety-nine.

The blanket was pulled over her head to block the sun's rays that announced that Tuesday - _or was it Wednesday?_ \- when a set of four paws walked across the mattress. A lazy meow accompanied them when they brushed the fabric's surface, in a request that the human beneath it wake up. Johnny cursed. High. But the stray cat was not the real target of her insults. A snore in her belly and the particularly high temperature in the room made Johnny realize that lunchtime was approaching, which was a bad sign. Midday brought the only appointment that made any sense to Johnny's weeks.

And she was late.

Suddenly, the cat found himself surrounded by a tangle of fabrics with textures that managed particularly uncomfortable when thrown in his snout. He started to get rid of them while watching the human being swallowed by the wardrobe, impatience being the first piece placed under the shoulders and manifesting itself through sighs of tiredness during the search for real clothes. From the feline's point of view, there was nothing wrong with those with whom she had woken up - and who now rested under his paws. After all, Johnny would always dawn with those. And that seemed to motivate her to focus her choice on the most humiliating pieces she could find inside that dusty cubicle. A meow of disgust escaped his mouth when the explosion of colors of a pair of pants was added to the prints of a linen blouse, finally placed under a brown vest that was totally useless, because instead of hiding, it intensified all that even more.

 _God_ , how he hated the sixties.

As soon as Johnny went to the kitchen, she called for the cat, and the sound of food being placed in the bowl made his heart skip a beat. Johnny was placing the glasses on her face when the animal flew over the food. The taste remained old, tasteless and industrial, and Johnny knew it, but there was a hint of humor and melancholy in her eyes when the animal raised its head to face her. It wasn't like he had any choice.

The space offered by the small kitchen attached to the walls made it possible for Johnny to find her cigarettes quickly, on top of one of the cabinets. She wasted no time looking for her keys, however. They had disappeared long enough that the door no longer needed them. When Johnny passed the makeshift dining room - a typical restaurant sofa, with torn leather upholstery at one end, also attached to the wall along with a small table -, her feet stopped. She took two steps back - and facing the table, crouched down. The wallets up there seemed to be looking back at her. There were eighty-six in total. And one of them was misaligned. Johnny cautiously repositioned it with her finger and squinted to check the others.

And that should be Johnny's food because her heart skipped too.

If you crossed the main avenue, passed Donald & Son semi-bankrupt laundry, the baseball field full of scary junkies and the playground full of even more scary kids, finally, crossing the old radio station, you would arrive at a big trailer parking, provisionally set up to generate profits for the landlord while the construction of a new shopping was not resumed. There, you would come across simple models of vans and trailers which formed a strange and silent community, in which everything could be seen, but few were really risking to see.

And the good thing about living surrounded by so-called rock stars, complex artists and psychotics who are prone to sexual predators, was that Johnny didn't need much effort to camouflage herself. Not that she needed to hide something. Even if "something" meant an extensive collection of leather wallets, 132 wristwatches, 237 blue ballpoint pens, 24 radios, 43 yellow pillows, 12 screwdrivers and 7 refrigerator penguins.

Johnny made sure the wallets were lined up one last time before getting up and heading for the door, forcing the cat to abandon the metal bowl to follow her.

Johnny's neighbors weren't exactly the kind of people who could be described as friendly, but it wasn't like they had the best adjectives in store for her either. Harry was already outside, his fat feet hanging over the table, listening to a football match on his motorhome radio with catatonic attention. His white tank top was marked by splashes of the partially chewed taco sauce that rested on a plate.

The sport's trance was broken as soon as Johnny passed Harry, and she could watch him vibrate fervently when the announcement of the local team's point was made. The celebration became even more interesting when his wife went outside and hit him on the arm with a frying pan, whispering that their son had finally fallen asleep.

Johnny tried to leave the discussion as soon as possible. Things used to get more intense after the second point was scored, and she had promised herself that she would never again make the mistake of waiting to watch them. She managed to reach the main entrance to the parking lot as soon as Pearl's Cadillac made a dangerous turn to park violently in front of Trevor's guardhouse, the guy who was supposed to be the manager of the place, but could barely manage his own drugs. The sign reading PARADISE'S BREAK was kicked by the woman and she stood on tiptoe to face Trevor through the artificial glass protection of her two square meter office. Inside, the man cringed when Pearl pulled out a revolver in search of the two hundred dollars he owed her.

When Johnny crossed their path, however, Pearl allowed herself to smile. She loved cats, and witnessing one, following a person obediently, gave her a satisfaction that even the best heroine in town couldn't offer.

At Johnny's feet, however, the cat did not seem to have the same sympathy for the woman, shrinking its body in a threatening position while the loud noise in its throat did the job. Pearl, still enchanted, tried to call out to him again, her fingers crackling steadily as she recited variations of affectionate nicknames in a childish voice.

When the animal's hair stood on end and a high-pitched meow was thrown at the woman, Johnny bent down to adjust the hem of her pants at the same moment that the accidental shot was made by the gun. She looked up in time to see the cat running away, leaving the smell of powder as evidence of the triumph of his prank. The word "paradise" on the sign had lost half the letters I and S, leaving the phrase in a strange and unfinished aesthetic.

Johnny got up quickly, the new reckoning between Pearl and Trevor falling behind along with the debate over which of the two should fix the property. She rounded the shoulder and turned at the first corner that gave access to the gas station, which also served as a clandestine betting point, very popular with middle-aged people who only "stopped by" the fuel pumps. In one of them, a man with a permanent was cursing Antony - a young redhead with a toothpick stuck to his lips - for making him lose a game. Antony stopped looking at the man in time to see Johnny when she passed him. What he didn't see was the other man's right hook going towards his chin.

Johnny crossed the street again, passed the Pucket Brothers' law building and took care not to be stopped again for using the establishment's fence as a shortcut to reach the main avenue. Already on the other side, she slowed down as soon as she passed the back of Sparkles nightclub.

"I'm just saying that that Rue bitch has been stealing my tips all week," Donavan, one of the dancers, was saying.

Leslie squinted at him as she drew her cheek to inhaling her cigarette.

"Cherry never trusted her. That's why she was banned from that nightclub in Colorado. Who can get kicked out of shit like that?"

The smoke trapped in Leslie's mouth was gently blown back into the air, enveloping the boy in a grayish cloud. The two were leaning against the wall, next to the huge garbage cans of the place, both dressed in tight and super bright overalls. In fact, the shine was everywhere: hair, eyelids, nails. It was as if two disco balls had come to life and materialized in human form.

If Johnny hadn't been so late, she would have gone to them to share a pack of cigarettes. They used to be friendly most days, inviting her to have a few drinks while the nightclub kept the doors closed and they needed to wait until the activity time began, during at night. When she was looking for another kind of entertainment, usually when she woke up in a bad mood or just with extra energy for chaos, Johnny appealed to the truth about Leslie. It was she who had been stealing Donavan's tips, not Rue. And whenever Johnny brought it up, she watched the sparkling duo reach the lowest levels of disagreements of a privileged point of view, almost like a private reality show designed by her own hands. Over the course of the episodes, Johnny was able to collect more information about the parties involved, secrets revealed at the time of anger and details whispered by the audience - usually made up of barmen, who, like her, were completely entertained by the discussion -, which allowed an arsenal of compromising facts to be mounted for the next discuss.

Johnny walked away discreetly and reached the busy downtown street in time to almost be hit by a can of paint. If it weren't for the speed with which she had slipped under the painter's ladder, she would probably be an unconscious body dyed blue now. The people walking around swore, charging for the professional's attention. From the top, practically clinging to the cinema sign, Ethan Manson adjusted his cap on his head and bowed, apologizing.

Johnny finished crossing by the stair and cupped her hand over her glasses to block the sun rays and look upwards. It was possible to see the raised letters of Romeo and Juliet followed by a long and irregular trail of paint, a trace of Ethan's imbalance. He tried to say something to Johnny, something about seven years of bad luck, but she decided to ignore him intentionally, going to the curb and waiting until the speed of the cars slowed down before she could cross.

Accompanied by the sound of horns and the middle fingers of drivers, she got, and across the street, the cat was waiting for her in front of a fire hydrant. He joined Johnny's walk as soon as her boots reached the sidewalk, her steps starting to take on a pace that the animal struggled to keep up with while avoiding being trampled by people who came and went, mesmerized by shop windows and restaurants. It was not long before the unmistakable sound of loudspeakers and war cries reached the pair's ears, rushing them. They went forth, and on their side, a traffic jam started to take shape making the owners of the establishments leave their offices, stunned and looking for some unhappy soul that they could blame for the noise. Or rather, souls.

And in addition to those who had already joined the group somewhere on that block, others began to appear among pedestrians, holding signs nailed to wooden splints and posters proudly wielded in their hands. They also carried with them the characteristic smell of low-quality weed and the lack of a bath, caused by long pilgrimages on the road.

Johnny watched the march over the glasses, the people being attracted by the sound like ants in sugar. She looked down and the cat seemed to be waiting for her attention, its yellow eyes looking at her with hope. And with that cue, Johnny turned against the flow of people and entered a nearby alley.

She bent down again, just as she had with Pearl a few minutes earlier, and the cat sat down, leaning on three paws as he brought one up to snout height to lick it, waiting for Johnny's next move.

"We will take the same approach. You know, we are on their side, we are not a threat. Remember to act like everyone is as guilty as you are and be cool," she was pulling the leather on her left boot to access the content from inside your socks. "And no jokes, okay? You always get us in trouble when you try to improvise, so follow the damn plan," her fingers sank toward her ankle. "Oh, and for God's sake, stay away from the dogs!", and with a jolt, a knife was pulled out of the boot.

The cat stopped licking his paw immediately to face Johnny.

"Too much?"

He tilted his head to the side and she shrugged.

"We left in a hurry, there was no time to get our things," she said in a low voice as if they weren't the only two souls in that alley. "No, it's not improvisation when we are in an emergency."

Then she looked toward the street, impatient. The minutes were ticking fast and her plans tended to do much better when they were on time, but she was beginning to have doubts whether they would even be able to reach half of it if the cat continued to disapprove of her methods. Johnny sighed deeply, returned the knife to the sock and stood up urgently. Her head, however, remained tilted downward, her eyes searching for anything that would be useful in that situation. They stopped at a bottle cap and Johnny hurried to pick it up.

"This is so amateur," she said, her voice upset as she held the small aluminum ring between her fingers.

She returned to the street and crossed the nearest corner, and the cat waited patiently in front of the tire of a Sedan until she was done with her "business". When she came back, Johnny was carrying a piece of cardboard. In it, it was possible to read in capital letters the request LEAVE VIETINAM! THE WAR IS A VIRUS!, which despite the grammatical mistake, seemed quite determined. A few steps away, a man seemed to celebrate the turning of his life thanks to a precious stone found. The almost neurotic enthusiasm became less and less audible as Johnny approached the crowd of protesters, and she made sure the cat stayed out of it before it was thrown into the crowd.

Behind a huge strip - which demanded the return of American troops to the United States - bell-bottom pants and bandanas marched decisively down the avenue. In situations like this, Johnny's attention seemed to triple. She kept her ears open for every sound that might grow around her, hands raised just high enough to keep her behavior from other people and her eyes focused behind the yellow lenses as much detail as she could. The way people acted was the main one. The pace at which they breathed, the height at which their shoulders were held, whether they were stoned or not, the speed at which they walked, everything should be taken into account, and Johnny had spent most of her time trying to decorate them. So when a student was accidentally pushed towards her, Johnny knew exactly which arm to hold on to help the girl regain her balance and - at the same time - rip the watch off her wrist without anyone noticing.

"That's okay," Johnny said, returning the smile.

She waited until the girl turned her back to walk away, going to where a man in a leather vest was looking for someone to help him with his sign while tying his shoelaces. Johnny got to his side promptly, picking up all that THROW THE SYSTEM IN THE TRASH scrawled with crayons and placed under her arm. When the man got up to pick him up and thank her, Johnny would have heard her flirtations if she was no longer determined to reach into her vest pocket. She took advantage of the turn of the march on a new street to throw herself at the rocker and left him speaking his phone number alone when she made sure that his wallet had been properly placed behind her back.

Johnny decided to go to the front line, next to the megaphones and conductors of the movement. She kept murmuring rhymes and catchphrases - funny hours, almost offensive hours, but sarcastic at the right point, which also made them funny - until the walk took the crowd to the main point, in front of the building that served as headquarters for the Roswell daily newspaper. They always said that that kind of people lived to attract attention, at least now, they were purposefully going after her.

But it was not the possibility of having her face stamped on the cover of some sensationalist news that was making Johnny's hands sweat. Standing some distance from where she was, police chief Malore looked analytically at the demonstration, stroking his goatee as he exchanges a few words with his foreman, the young Ernest, who seems increasingly frightened by the growing chorus of the group before his eyes.

When Malore raised his hands to his waist, Johnny could have sworn he drools a little. She had dreamed of that moment so many times that she couldn't even say it. It had taken part of her baths, most of her meals and was still there before she falls asleep. Things could not go wrong. Not this time. It was right there, in the front pocket of the military uniform. She could see the bulge well. Genuine crocodile leather, about 125 grams, double banknote compartment, zipper so soft it didn't even make a noise. Johnny remembered the first time she had seen that wallet, at a quick exchange of money at the counter in Miss Blossom's cafeteria on Malore's religious passage around the place for the first coffee of his shift at eight. Johnny's collection was already a considerable size by then, but a sophisticated model like Malore's would certainly add a few more points to her collection. Also, the challenge that involved the task made everything more interesting. Stealing the wallet of the highest-ranking policeman in that shitty city made Johnny's eyes shine like stars, and just the thought of being a few steps away from her holy grail made her breathing a little quicker.

The crowd cheered as one of the journalists left, but disappointment washed over their voices when the man in suspenders walked up to the cops, looking as upset as they were. Johnny knew that from then on, the scenario would become more and more intense, and if she wanted to succeed in that attempt, things would have to happen quickly, but Malore needed to explode together.

The good thing about being in protest, however, was that everything could turn into a powder keg, you just had to make sure that the right toothpick would be scratched. And Johnny had tested most of them. Until that moment, her plans had been based on the most varied approaches, some humiliating - like the longest fifteen minutes of her life with Antony in the back seat of one of the vehicles - and others stupidly bad - how to attract Malore to the front of a truck in an attempt to run him over to steal his corpse wallet - but whatever scenario Johnny was taken into, her hands always ended up empty and the wallet remained in Malore's pocket. But there was something optimistic about that new strategy, much simpler and more objective than its ineffective track record had been.

Around Johnny, however, things were still moving in slow motion. The people who remained faithful to the manifest, even amid sirens and disorienting gases, were resistant to the attack of the cops, intoning demands and defending themselves as they could. Those who saw their lives as the only cause that they were truly obliged to defend, climbed hoods, jumped street benches and pushed anything or person that came their way, avoiding, without any difficulty, the officers who until then were accustomed only to chasing donuts.

But it was in Malore's eyes that real confusion reigned. Johnny remained to stand, staring at him from where she was while everything else collapsed between them. She was the spark and Malore hated smoke. For this reason, he did not wait until one of his colleagues could stop her before launching himself down the stairs, moving quickly towards Johnny, decreeing her arrest. As soon as Malore hit her and her eighty kilos pressed her body to the floor, Johnny was sure that a new pair of injured ribs had joined the others.

It was only when a mongrel's teeth dug into Malore's shoulder that things came to life again, and the instant a second dog attacked the policeman's leg, making him stand up in a desperate act, Johnny's back practically bowed in a gesture of welcome to the lost oxygen. She didn't wait for a third dog to join them to get up and run.

After passing a policeman who was struggling not to have his handcuffs stolen and a fire hastily built in a trash can, Johnny looked down then.

"What did I tell you about dogs?", her voice was breathless, but not enough that the cat did not understand it, controlling the rhythm of its paws to stay within Johnny's run.

Through the loudspeaker of one of the vehicles, a new arrest warrant was issued, but this time, with a particular target to be apprehended. There was no need to look back to know that Malore had sent subordinates to avenge the bite on his calf, the sound of boots hitting the asphalt almost synchronized with Johnny's heartbeat. Holy shit, how tired she was. She could get it over with that, throwing herself on the floor and waited for some bald policeman to put her hands back and drag her away in handcuffs, but Johnny hated how hot the precinct prison cell got hot at that time in the morning and she had already wasted Tuesdays too much in it. So, she kept running.

Johnny couldn't say whether it was the pain in her abdomen or the bewildering sun that prevented her from noticing when something got in her way. Her senses, once so alert, seemed to have fallen asleep with adrenaline and only returned to their proper functions when she was already on the floor, struggling to rise with her elbows while she felt the metallic taste of blood invade her lips. Her vision, however, was perfectly normal, but she made sure to blink a few times and open her eyes wide to make sure that this was no longer one of the recurring situations in which her mind decided to play tricks on her.

In front of the blood-covered woman in front of her, Lila Pitts thought the same.

It couldn't be right. Well, actually, nothing seemed to be right in the last few hours - not to mention the days, or more precisely, the last few years since the day of her birth - but traveling to another point in the past was definitely not what Lila imagined when she decided to escape from all that strangeness her mother had put her in. Lila had a very different destiny in mind, but it was to be expected that the calculations would get complicated and that the technologies would fail when the only thing you keep thinking about is the scene of the woman who created you being shot to death. Lila could still hear the sound of the shot echo in her head, as if her brain had been removed and all that was left was the same desperation that haunted a girl for years after she crossed the bodies of her biological parents stretched out in the middle of living room. And the possibility that her adoptive mother could be responsible for all of that only made things worse. If true, the Handler's end may have been well deserved, but it still hasn't been enough to erase everything they've built together up until then as a mother and daughter. Or was it? Lila could have sworn it would still drive her crazy, but there were things she needed to do before that. Failing to refer to The Handler as a mother was the first of them.

Oh, and there were the Hargreeves. Six new problems she would have to deal with in addition to the other thousands she already had. Before getting headlong into all that plan to getting stuck in a psychiatric clinic in 1963, Lila managed to list the beautiful advantages that obeying her mom could bring her, but had new siblings was definitely not one of them. And, as if that wasn't enough, there was Diego in the middle of it all. Angry would be a trivial term to refer to how Lila was feeling about him and his family, but she couldn't deny that a bitter taste rose in her throat every time she thought about Number Two's whereabouts. Which was tremendous stupidity, since he was not the one who was about to be trampled by a band of hippies and policemen in the middle of the street from an unknown place.

It was the horn of a car behind her that made Lila come back to the present, but it was the blood running down the woman's nose in front of her that made her understand why her forehead was throbbing. The bloody figure, however, seemed not to have been bothered by the injury. Was she really smiling? A crease formed on Lila's forehead. What was so funny about having your nose smashed by a stranger?

But it wasn't the blood that made Lila finish losing her reasoning completely. She had seen blood many times. It was part of her life. Who she was from. But that above Johnny's wrist didn't. In fact, what Lila had been trying to do all along was to get away from that. And even if all the blood in the world was put in cylinders in front of her, that umbrella tattoo would still be the most terrifying thing that Lila could be seeing.

 _Shit_ , were they everywhere?


End file.
